How to get perfect turf grass for your sports field with the best lighting technologies

By Karla García, Hort Americas Technical Services

All people in sports business know how important is to maintain turf grass of sports fields in perfect shape. To achieve this, different products are applied in order to provide all the nutrients and protection to turf grass. However, maybe we are missing a very important aspect.

What about light?

Nowadays, sports business demands the best and most modern architecture in stadiums. Nevertheless sometimes some factors such as lighting must be sacrificed in order to achieve architectural demands and create new, modern and impressive stadiums. 

Low rooting in turf grass as soccer field with light deficiency (Photo by Alex Pedraza)

Turf grass requires a daily minimum amount of light to stay in shape with healthy green color and rooting. When natural light is not enough at your sports field no matters how much fertilizers you use, you will not get the results you are expecting in a situation where light is deficient. As a result you will get less plant density in your grass and more importantly.. low rooting. This last aspect can be a key in sports field quality. We get different comments from experts in turf grass management in important stadiums like our current collaboration with Akron Stadium. It is one of the largest and more important soccer stadiums in Mexico where “Las Chivas”—one of the strongest soccer teams in México—train and perform. Akron Stadium is located in Zapopan, Jalisco and it is recognized by its modern and impressive architecture. However, lack of light in turf grass brings as a consequence low quality in specific zones of the field, where low rooting and low plant density have been reported. As a result, players can feel unbalance when running at the soccer field and even cause sport players to slip up at the field during games. In addition turf grass patches must be used in order to replace the loss of grass in every game to maintain sport field in shape. Therefore, light deficiency in sports fields can have an impact in general turf grass quality, sports player performance on the field and in long term expenses applied to turf grass management. 

Low plant density in soccer field with low light levels (Photo by Alex Pedraza)

In our current collaboration with Akron Stadium, lighting experiments have been applied in order to measure the response of turf grass to supplemental lighting. Results have demonstrated a strong root improvement when applying supplemental lighting (DLI levels between 20 to 29) to turf grass. Meaning addition of artificial lighting can help solve current issues at Akron Stadium. 

At Hort Americas, we know how important it is to maintain a sport field in perfect shape. Therefore, we are working to offer you the best solutions in lighting to achieve minimum lighting requirements to keep turf grass healthy in sports fields. As a leading company in lighting supplies we compromise to work with you to provide all tools to:

  • Analyze and monitor how much light the sports field is getting, how much light is needed, and which zones should be target.
  • Customize and design the proper structure based on your necessities to mount the best lighting options.
  • Provide great lighting technologies with the best light output, energy efficiency and of course best light quality, such as our lastest version of the GE Arize Element L1000.  The GE Arize Element L1000 is an 1:1 replacement for HPS lamps with 84% more efficiency than HPS and PPF up to 1827 μmol/s.
Low plant density and grass damage after soccer games in field with low light levels. Comparison with same soccer filed but in zone with good light levels. (Photos by Alex Pedraza)

Let us work with you to get the best products along with our technical services to help you get the turf grass quality your stadium deserves!